


Good, Better, Best

by MostlyAnon



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Asari - Freeform, F/M, Gen, Geth, Krogaurd, Mass Effect 3 - Freeform, Mass Effect Kink Meme, Minor Tali/Kal, Minor femshep/Garrus, Multiplayer, N7 Squads, Original Character(s), Quarians, Raan, Turians, Vangaurd, War, infiltrator, pilot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-22
Updated: 2012-11-23
Packaged: 2017-11-19 06:50:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/570412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MostlyAnon/pseuds/MostlyAnon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shepard wages war, but they hold the line. </p><p>Assignments were handed out by tired-looking Alliance operatives on the Citadel, transport was arranged by civilian support staff, and weapons were provided by whoever you could bribe into selling you one. No, they could not tell you who your superior officer was. There was a chance your superior officer would be dead by the time you arrived. If this happened, you could consider it a field promotion until back up arrived. All objectives were still expected to be completed. Transportation information was on that screen over there. Good luck, soldier. Next!</p><p>ME:3's Multiplayer, as lived by a pair of quarian infiltrators.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Firebase Reactor/Any/Bronze

**Author's Note:**

> I usually try to stay away from OCs in fanfic, but this was too interesting a challenge to pass up. Originally written for the kink meme.

If you were a quarian and Fleet born, you knew families, even if you never met the members. Of course you knew the famous families, the Zorah, the Reegar, the Koris. Everyone knew the admirals, the captains. Family names were familiar, little bits of history clinging to them like a sniffly nose after an infection. Family names were important, were their survival. You knew the families, even if you had never met.

So Zen’Vorik knew Nadya’Raan before he actually met her. Of course he knew her-- the Raan family had been producing top rate Patrol Infiltrators for nearly as long as the Reegars had been producing marines. The loss of Adad’Raan fighting the geth was a story still told, fifteen years later, and Admiral Shala’Raan had been no wilting figure in their history. Their daughter was not the sort that mixed with second rate recruits that nearly failed the Recon Entrance Exam because they had been trying to outdrink the rest of the recruits the night before. So while Zen’Vorik had the distinct advantage of knowing who Nadya’Raan was before he found himself assigned to the same N7 Squad as her, he was confident in the knowledge that she had no idea who he was.

Assignments were handed out by tired-looking Alliance operatives on the Citadel, transport was arranged by civilian support staff, and weapons were provided by whoever you could bribe into selling you one. No, they could not tell you who your superior officer was. There was a chance your superior officer would be dead by the time you arrived. If this happened, you could consider it a field promotion until back up arrived. All objectives were still expected to be completed. Transportation information was on that screen over there. Good luck, soldier. Next!

Zen didn’t actually meet Nadya’Raan until his boots hit dirt on Tuchanka. His briefing, (downloaded, memorized, deleted; Zen might have been a second rate recruit but he was a damn good infiltrator,) listed Cylone as his first assignment. 

The drop-off zone of the port was a seething mass of confusion. Reaper forces hadn’t arrived yet, but they were due any time. Krogan were leaving en masse while N7 Operatives on the way to the front lines fought to find their shuttles and squads. Zen was late, but he eventually found the crowd listening to the mission briefings about Cylone after a detour through the pilots’ ranks and stumbling through a krogan headbutting ritual. 

The crowd was mixed thoroughly with soldiers and sentinels, but he saw plenty of engineers. Geth and quarian, humans with cases of equipment. Turians grouped in loose formation, checking weapons. Krogan battlemasters lounged with asari commandos, listening absently as the rest of them were given the rundown. Zen watched the crowd, puzzling out the patterns of attention and inattention, analyzing the structure. He finally realized that those who were talking, the most distracted of the crowd, they had no need of a briefing. Their jobs would be the same no matter the mission-- they were meat shields, bodyguards. It unsettled him to see the apathy in their eyes.

An asari Justicar stepped gracefully onto a crate and began the briefing. “Squads will be deployed at 0600 local time, in thirty minute intervals. Drop off locations have been marked as approximate. Many pilots will be unable to land directly due to heavy enemy activity in the area. Be aware of this and prepared to trek to your destination. Objectives will be relayed over coms, but we are mainly attempting to repair damages. Priority targets will be tagged as encountered. Transport assignments are posted with the pilots. May the goddess watch over you. Dismissed.”

Zen stood still in the ebbing sea of people as the crowd began to disperse. It was almost homey. Rundown, overcrowded, and closer to death than anyone wanted to really think about. 

He didn’t need his cloak to disappear into the mass-- they simply swept by him. He heard a krogan rumble a laugh, a pair of vorcha snarl to each other as they followed a turian unit. He marked them all, scan filtering through the grunts to identify leaders. His omnitool didn’t make a sound, (he’d spent three weeks modifying it after he’d been busted by an incoming email; that had been a tough one to explain in the debriefing,) but he felt the faint vibration when it found his squad and transport. The pod lit up in his vision, outlined against the inside of his visor. He flicked his fingers slightly against the omnitool’s interface and information began to pour down the inside of his visor, pulling up intelligence on his new team.

He trigged his cloak as he approached, walking on silent steps. Nadya was standing with a female human pilot in front of his transport. He slipped behind a crate as his VI loaded Nadya and the pilot’s dossiers. The pilot would get them to the drop zone, that was for sure, given her record. Sixty-eight extractions, ten of which had been with only one engine. Seventeen official reprimands that read like heroic tales meant to inspire. He had always loved a woman who knew when to break a few rules.

Nadya was full of surprises, he was sure, but her dossier was not. She had a very nice Widow, (no bribery there, mommy probably just loaned it to her,) and an Arc Pistol, not what he would have picked, but still, decent guns both of them. A tiny charm hung from the trigger guard of the Widow and he crept forward, intent on getting a look at it. 

He stopped close to her, practically touching, (she had shadow sunrises embroidered on her suit, black thread with black fabric,) and bent his head to look at the tiny gear secured with a bit of red thread.

“I hope you are not always so sloppy,” Nadya said, without moving. 

Zen grinned, catching the pilot’s confused look. He let his cloak fall, adopting an air of easy innocence. 

“Zen’Vorik, reporting,” he said, saluting Nadya the way marines did. It was a small insult to salute an infiltrator-- I see you, it said. You are spotted.

She didn’t turn her head to look at him, just brought up her omnitool and tapped at it. “You’re late and I had a lock on your heat signature three meters away. If you want to survive past your first objective, you will need to adjust your suit’s biometrics.”

“Yes, just arrived,” he said, pleasantly. “Trip wasn’t bad for military transport, though I almost missed the shuttle. Been years since I was on the Citadel.”

Judging from her look, she didn’t find him nearly as charming as he actually was.

A pair of engineers showed up shortly after that to round out the squad. Zen had already hacked into the Alliance databases and knew what to expect. Despite that, it was odd to come face to face with geth units that weren’t trying to kill him. 

Nadya ran through the mission parameters then, her voice clipped, words brief. The geth nodded in unison, which prompted Zen to ask if they had coordinated that or if it was just a coincidence, which led to a brief but interesting conversation about the consensus in which Zen learned that they knew some of the units which had tried to kill him once, and it really was a funny little galaxy, wasn’t it?

 Zen had been right about the pilot-- she took them in, dropped them in the only calm zone on Cylone, and banked hard out of there. Zen straightened beside Nadya as they surveyed the reactor center.

“Should have asked,” he said, as his VI analyzed the blueprints, ran a tactical scan, and compared the results of both, overlaying the grid against his vision. “Do you want to take primary or should I? Usually, I work--”

Nadya activated her cloak and disappeared. He watched her shadow streak into the compound.

“Alone, but yeah, I was thinking you should take primary,” Zen finished, watching her go. “You seem like the type to suck at secondary. Good talk.”

***

Nadya was good. Nadya was _very_ good. Zen spent the first two objectives just trying to keep up. She beat him to every console, every bomb, and was hard at work before he could even get his rifle up to cover her. 

He eventually beat her to the first of the final objectives, but only because he happened to be standing next to it when the coordinates came in. She was halfway through the second by the time he hacked his way through the Reaper forces to cover her six. He set up nearby best he could, exhausted from the long, violent run. There was a smear of something on his visor, probably that marauder from a few meters back, dead now, and it partially clouded his vision, but he ignored it.

“You’re a _bru'ja_ ,” he gasped, pulling in long gulps of air and trying not to let his dying from exertion interfere with her work. “Or you have a twin. That’s it! You actually have a twin, right? Hidden conspiracy, Raan just told us she had one child and raised you both?”

Nadya finished and straightened up, smoothly drew her Widow, and put a round between the eyes of a husk heading for one of the geth units. 

She flicked him a look. “Can’t keep up?” she asked.

He stared after her, watching as she beat him to the _third_ objective.

***

Two more runs on Cylone-- the reward for work well done was always more work. He found his footing on the second run, and on the third, he called primary before they set down on the base. He took off and she followed him. There was a rhythm to infiltration, the beat of a silent dance usually done alone, but they were slowly adjusting to the change of song. 

There was one terse moment, when both geth units went down, torn apart by banshees. Nadya was sniping, trying to distract the twin abominations while he huddled scant meters away, frantically decrypting a device. She dropped her cloak to pull attention from him, trying to draw them away with shouts and shots. He finished just in time to see a brute throw her several meters in one mighty swipe.

He couldn’t say how long it took; almost too long, but he made it. The brute went down after he emptied his last clip, his only rocket took out the terror twins, and he muttered prayers to any ancestor that was listening as he frantically applied medigel and sealed Nadya's suit tears. 

“You’re done early,” Pilot said conversationally over the com when he could finally signal her for extraction. His laughter was tinged with desperation and he collapsed against the wall, holding Nadya’s still, but stable, form in his arms, his last grenade clutched in his free hand.

***

Six runs and five squads later, they were on Sur’Kesh, fighting Cerberus with two of the youngest turians he’d ever met. Zen had his footing and Nadya’s rhythm irresistible. Their dance was a duet, missteps less frequent and successes more common. She was primary, now, trying to shut down devices that might have been bombs, if they were lucky.

“Zen.” Nadya’s voice in his ear, terse with concentration and annoyance. 

When he scanned the area, he found her at the objective across the courtyard, exactly where she should have been, and one of their baby turians hovering over her, exactly where he shouldn’t have been.

“Got you,” he radioed back, scoping and dropping a pair of guardians. He laid down cover fire as she raced for the next objective, her turian in pursuit. She brushed Zen’s hip with her hand as they passed him, her cloak up, making her invisible, and his down, making him a target.

He snagged the turian by the cowl as he went past and used the momentum to jerk him around and down so they saw eye to eye.

“What are you doing?” Zen asked, hanging on when the turian tried to jerk away.

“Covering her ass!” he snapped back.

“No,” Zen explained, “you are _drawing their attention to her_ and increasing the chance she’ll get hit by a bullet meant for you.” He shook the turian by his collar once, in emphasis, then let him go. “You want to help her, you draw the fire away.”

“What if one finds her?” the turian asked, backing away, taking up position to cover his flank. Whatever else, the hierarchy trained their soldiers right.

“She’ll stop, drop the bosh’tet, and go back to work,” he said, lifting his rifle back to his shoulder. He scanned the area, found her, and fired a round into the backside of a phantom, drawing it’s attention. “She knows what she’s doing. Let her do it.”


	2. Any/Any/Silver

Sitting back to back amidst the rubble of what was once an asari stronghold, they watched the sun set and listened to the static of Zen’s radio. He was ostensively attempting to clear up the signal, but they both knew it was hopeless-- there was nothing to clear up. The static was all there was. He felt Nadya move against his back, the tubes of their suits bumping, her suit rubbing against his, and under that all, muscles shifting as she cleaned her Widow. They looked like the dusk and the dark, his suit blazing gold against the inky night of hers.

Two more dead squadmates. Grief didn’t touch him anymore. All he had the energy for was relief; she survived, he survived. Winning the war or losing, Reapers, Cerberus, or geth, as far as he was concerned, everything in the galaxy had been destroyed except them and the next set of objectives. 

It didn’t bother him. It bothered him that it bothered her.

He saw it in the way she had lingered over the baby turians. (They lasted longer than Zen would have originally bet.) In the way she hadn’t lingered over the humans that replaced the turians. In the way she barely spoke to anyone besides him or Pilot. He knew he compensated by speaking too much, more than enough for both of them.

He looked up to watch the approaching darkness, chasing away their light. “We should link suits,” he said. “Marine squads do it all the time. If you go down, I have better treatment options.”

She paused her work; the sound of metal on metal stopped. “If _I_ go down?” she asked. Her tone might have been frosty, but she was relaxed against him.

He grinned at the dusk. “Fine, fine. When _I_ go down, you can treat my wounds first and I won’t have to fight your germs, too.”

“Has this line ever actually worked for you?” she asked, starting on his Carnifex, a gift from a dead Cerberus operative. 

“I don’t know,” he said, leaning his head back so his helmet rested on her shoulder. “Has it?” 

***

News was currency, as much as clips, mods, and reliable guns. In the runs between missions, in the rare moments off-mission when Pilot needed to get gear from a local stronghold, Nadya always ran secondary to him. On the field, Zen was better back-up; for all he was fast, he had a harder time ignoring the instinct that told him to protect _her._ He tended to look up at every bullet, distracted by the battle. She was surprised he ever learned to snipe at all, but he wasn’t that protective of their other squadmates, just her. It irritated her, when she let it.

She could tune him out on the field. She was used to running solo, and after a half dozen missions with her as primary and him on her six, she knew he wouldn’t go down without her knowing. He wasn’t the type to do _anything_ quietly.

Nadya could relay orders, sum up missions in scant words, but Zen was a master at people. He smiled, he charmed, he swapped intelligence for ammo and medigel, always walking away with twice what he paid. 

She watched him flirt with an asari commando and smiled behind her mask-- the asari was pretty, but Zen’s eyes were on her Paladin. 

***

Zen woke up with a warm weight on him, pressed across his hips, rocking, fingers on his mask. He lashed out and stilled when his fist was caught, deftly, when the pressure above him went _hard_ , holding him in place, effectively.

His Paladin caught under Nadya’s chin before he opened his eyes. She stared down at him, patient, the same set to her shoulders as when he’d accidentally, ( _accidentally!_ ) knocked a geth device over the edge of a very high platform. She was waiting to see what he was going to do to make things right.

“Ah,” he said, clicking the pistol away from her. “Good morning, Nadya’Raan.” 

She was straddling him, pressed in tight against him. They had bedded down on site, tucked up high in the rafters of what might have once been a human habitation. Half asleep and his brain sluggish from the very pleasant feedback his suit was giving him every time she took a breath, he knew only a few things with certainty. No objectives yet. No enemies. No teammates. 

And if the way her hips were moving was any clue, Zen _had_ to see Nadya dance, because the woman knew how to move.

“All caught up?” she asked, pressing her hands to the clasps on his face plate.

“I think so,” he said. “Reapers are attacking, this is Firebase Condor, ten seconds left on the last objective?” 

She laughed, a sound low, husky, and rare. “Always--”

He caught her visor in a deft movement, clever fingers clicking the piece off and away, as he lifted his head. Whatever else she’d been about to say was lost against his lips, the words chased by breath, by the taste of her. He had probably skipped several very important social steps, kissing her before he’d even seen her naked, before they’d even discussed if this was a ‘blowing off steam after a battle’ thing or a ‘can’t imagine living without you but feel better knowing I’ll probably die with you,’ thing.

Her fingers tangled in the intake tubes of his helmet, gripping and pulling him closer as he took the kiss deeper, infiltrator to his core. She had let him in and he would take what he could steal before she changed her mind. His hands slid up the sides of her thighs, curved around when he caught her hips, thumbs brushing over the juncture high between them.

He found the tiny button along the seam and pressed hard, rewarded when she jerked and broke their kiss to throw her head back. She gasped, loud and echoing, bore down hard against him.

His smile was unrepentant. She pressed her forehead against his and met his gaze as he found the right rhythm. 

"Hey!"

Their heads snapped up in unison, him still with on hand on her nerve-stim and hers shoved down the open seam at his waist. She came up with his Paladin and he, her Carnifex, both of them level on the massive, scarred krogan that stood below them.

Zen dropped his head to Nadya's breast and exhaled. "I'm not crazy, right?" he muttered. "There really is a krogan down there?"

"Don't mind me," the krogan called. "I like to watch. Ha. Ha. Ha."

"I don't see what one has to do with the other," Nadya said, and slid off him.

***

The krogan’s name was Urdnot Wrath and he wore every victory from his considerable years carved into his hide. Under his bright armor, he was a roadmap of war. One eye had filmed over-- too badly destroyed or too often ruined for even a krogan to regenerate. (Zen never did learn what had happened, not for certain. Every time he asked, Wrath told him a different story.)

Wrath looked at the two quarians when they dropped down in front of him, shrugged like a mountain, and picked up his spike-thrower.

“That’s not actually meant to be a gun, is it?” Zen asked.

“Is that?” Wrath asked, nodding to Zen’s Paladin.

“I think I like him,” Nadya said.

***

Wrath more than lived up to his name. The first mission, (Cylone again, he hated Cylone,) Pilot barely landed before Wrath let out a rumbling laugh and jumped into the fray, ripping apart geth with apparent glee. He waded into the widest mass of enemies he could find and took the entire group out without a shot. 

It was almost boring, between objectives, until Nadya casually mentioned that it took her half a second less than him, on average, to complete an objective.

Zen stared at her a silent moment, aware of what she was doing. He could see the bait, the trap, all of it. Her ploy wasn’t transparent, it wasn’t obvious, it was dancing suitless in front of them while singing the Flotilla March. And still…

“Bru’ja,” he cursed, and when Pilot told them there was an unknown device nearby, he ran full out for it.


	3. Any/Any/Gold...waiting on 1 player.

On Ontarom, Zen and Nadya sat back to back, but this time, they rested against Wrath’s bulk, each absorbed in their own rituals. Around them, the corpses of reaper forces rotted and stunk, nothing but cold meat. Nadya cleaned her Black Widow, Wrath watched the bite wound on his arm heal back up, and Zen tried to figure out exactly what the krogan was. It had become a game, when Wrath realized the two quarians hadn’t figured it out. 

“Not a biotic,” Zen said, pausing.

Wrath rumbled, something between a breath and a purr. “Ate a biotic once. Tasted like pyjak.” He shifted his weight and Nadya and Zen swayed with the movement. “Maybe that was pyjak.”

“I do not think you are a soldier,” Nadya offered. Zen lifted his head, cocked it slightly but didn’t look at her.

“Why not?” Wrath asked. 

“I have never seen you use a grenade,” she said. “And all the krogan soldiers I have met, they used grenades.”

“There was that one on Menae,” Zen said.

“He was dead before Pilot was clear,” Nadya said, her tone making her feelings clear on that subject.

“Maybe he’s an infiltrator, like us,” Zen said, quickly. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re the galaxy’s only krogan infiltrator.”

“Ha ha ha,” Wrath laughed. “No, boy. My enemies _see_ me coming. It’s the last thing they ever see.”

They never saw her coming. There were a thousand reasons for it, excuses every one. They were tired, they were sure everything had been killed, who ever heard of a silent banshee? But it happened then-- a bone-chilling shriek, the scent of biotics gone sour on the air, and then the banshee was on top of them. 

Zen scrambled for his pistol, too close to get off a good shot with his rifle; he caught a flash of black as Nadya rolled away, then rolled again, going for cover. He threw his cloak up, brought his pistol around and sighted the banshee just in time to see it happening again-- it was just like Cylone, the banshee lifting Wrath up, her grotesque grin pulling back from her teeth as she prepared for the kill shot.

“No, no, no,” he muttered, scrambling for his rockets, knowing, _knowing_ he’d be too late and hating it, because he _liked_ Wrath and Nadya had _spoken_ to him, said something other than instructions to someone other than Zen and now this biotic reaper _bitch_ was going to kill Wrath. Not even krogan came back from a banshee kiss.

Wrath kicked once and then, over their open com, Zen heard the rumbling, rolling laugh: “Ha, ha, ha.”

Biotic flare radiated off the banshee, but began to swirl around the krogan, racing like lightning down his armor. There was a soft _whump_ , the feeling of pressure, like an inverted explosion, and Wrath slammed into the banshee with a the full force of a krogan battlemaster’s biotic charge.

When the dust settled, Wrath stood in the remains of the banshee and laughed, kicking the ashes around. “You were saying?” he called to Zen.

“Battlemaster,” Zen said, sagging with relief against the crate he’d used for cover. “Just throwing it out there, wild guess, but are you a battlemaster?”

***  
Halfway between runs, Zen dozed in the back of the shuttle, prevented from true sleep by the way his helmet occasionally knocked against Wrath’s shoulder. Nadya had circumvented the problem by sitting at Zen’s feet and resting her head on his thigh. His fingers tangled in the intake tubes running under her dark dupatta, thumb pressed intimately against the small seam at the base of her neck. Wrath spoke softly with Pilot, a low, near constant rumble, easily blending with the sounds of the engines; after nearly a year of war, it felt to Zen as close to home as anywhere did.

Wrath’s voice changed from a rumble to a sharp bark of command; Zen and Nadya both came awake with a start, guns up and ready before their eyes had properly cleared of sleep. The krogan rose, heedless of the quarians, and crouched so he could look into the cockpit at the navigation console.

“Put us down there,” Wrath repeated, pointing to a set of coordinates. 

Zen holstered his gun. “Where? Where are we?”

“We’re cleared for Thessia,” Pilot said, even as she rerouted their course. “This isn’t Thessia, big guy. This isn’t even close to Thessia.”

“Where _is_ it close to?” Zen asked, trying to see over Wrath to get a glimpse of their heading.

“Don’t care,” Wrath said. “Put us down there, human, or I’ll rip the door off your shuttle and walk there.”

“Aren’t we still in space?” Zen asked nobody in particular. “Can you walk to a planet from space? Is that a possibility?”

“Try me,” Wrath said.

They weren’t near Thessia. They weren’t near the fighting, either. Geth units stood in inactive hibernation until the engines of the shuttle roused them. There wasn’t much left to the fight. Whoever had lost this battle had extracted dear price for the geth’s victory.

But the asari was dead when they found her.

Nadya kicked the body over and knelt by it, checking for vitals. Protocol demanded verification, even if there wasn’t anyone for them to report the asari’s death to. Nadya had taken to making records of the dead they found, because, she said, one day, they might survive all this, and someone would want to know. Zen kept track of how many objectives they capped and how many they failed. Pilot tracked her extractions. Wrath marked off downed banshees, primes, and atlases. They all reduced the war to things they could handle.

Zen held Nadya’s Black Widow loose in his arms, scanning the area, ready for an attack. It hadn’t taken long to clear the area, but long experience prevented anyone from dropping their guard. Wrath was a few meters away, below them in the kill zone’s center. Zen lifted the scope to his eyes and watched the krogan headbutt one last pyro to death.

“She’s not dead,” Nadya said.

The asari was _almost_ dead when they found her.

Wrath’s laughter echoed off the walls of the kill zone like thunder on the horizon.

***

Her name was… Well, whatever it had been, it was Blue. Zen could remember her telling him another name, remembered that she was named for the ancient asari goddess of something or another, remembered it had a vowel in it, but Wrath called her Blue and Nadya referred to her as Blue and Zen soon had a hard time remembering her as anything else. 

She sat, still shaking, on a crate, drinking from Wrath’s canteen and answering their questions. “I’m sixty-three,” she said. 

“Didn’t know asari could walk, that young,” Wrath said. He was crouched in front of her, head tilted so he could look at her with his good eye. He’d taken the shotgun the maiden had carried, strapping it under his hump. It was light and he liked it. Payment for saving her hide. “Long way from your matron’s tit, Blue.”

Blue’s eyes blazed. She snapped her head up to stare at the ancient krogan, a snarl on her lips, her eyes bleeding black. “My mother was killed by Reapers, _red_ , along with practically every other citizen of Illium. I’ll go back to Thessia when I have enough firepower to raze the entire Reaper race to ash.”

Blue flames licked along her skin, a testament to her rage. She might have been young, but Zen could see the spirit that led her here, made her stand alone against the geth. She and Wrath held gazes for a long minute before Nadya interrupted.

“You will need a better gun,” Nadya said, unholstering Zen’s Geth SMG as she brushed by him. She offered his gun to the asari and he didn’t protest; watching her approach the maiden. “Use this. There is no good reason for you to use a shotgun and a sniper rifle.”

The asari just glared at them. “ _You_ have sniper rifles.” 

“That is why you don’t need one.” Zen grinned and clapped Blue on her shoulder. He shouldered her rifle, deftly hopping aside when she tried to grab for it back. It was a Mantis; not much use, but he could trade it for something better. He pulled up his omnitool’s interface, walking away so he could radio Pilot for extraction plus one. “Besides,” he called over his shoulder, “you don’t need a gun. You have a vanguard now.”

And then they were four.  


	4. Speed Run Leveling

“This run is standard, but do not get sloppy. Zen and I have experience at this location before; we programmed maps to your onmitools, along with short-range radar. It does not seem like there are many confirmed combatants. This is a small cell; normally we would not take such a mission, but it will be a good chance for low risk combat experience with Blue. Com chatter indicates we are facing Reaper forces. Standard op, objectives relayed in field. I am primary.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means stay away from her when she’s playing with wires.”

“Why not--”

“Because we know what we’re doing, unless you have a background in engineering we are not aware of. Better for to you stay with Wrath.”

“I’m not a child. Don’t speak to me like one.”

“Stay with me, Blue.”

“Whatever.”

“Drop off in sixty.”

“Nadya… I have to tell you...”

“Zen.”

“Just, in case this all goes bad--”

“Zen, we’re fighting a location we have cleared, just us, before Pilot could return to orbit. I took a nap once while you tried to clear the enemies by yourself. The only way this goes bad is if we do not bring any clips, and even then, I think we could manage.”

“I know, it’s tough, but let me get this out. I need to say it. We could die out there. This is our hardest mission yet.”

“We are fighting a tiny cell of Reapers. Estimates of less than a hundred combatants. I do not think this even counts as a mission, really.”

“I can’t die without you knowing.”

“You _might_ die if you keep this up. Sync coms. Mark.”

“Sync.”

 “Sync. What are they doing?”

“Sync. Flirting. Ignore the pyjacks.”

“Sync. Pilot?”

“Confirmed. Good luck out there.”

“Zen will be the only one who needs it.”  

"I love you, Nadya’Raan. You are the light of my life. The rounds in my rifle. The--”

“Sealant to your ports?”

“Exactly! Thank you, Blue.”

“Do not encourage him. We will go in first, clear the landing zone.”

“I want to have your tiny suited babies, Nadya.”

“That does not make sense, Zen. Two on the right.”

“I want to build you a house on the homeworld.”

“The only thing you know how to assemble is a gun.”

“I want to run my fingers through your hair.”

“That would kill both of us from infection, _bosh’tet.”_

“Are you two going to fuck or can we kill something?”

“Three on my left.”

“Got it. One now. None. Landing zone secure. Moving up. I want to watch you grow old.”

“Is that why you are taking so long?”

“Are they always like this?”

“No. Sometimes they’re worse.”

***

Even watching, Blue almost lost track of Nadya when she activated her cloak. The quarians’ chatter buzzed in her ear, over the coms, soothing her racing nerves. Her palms were damp; she shifted her grip on the tiny gun Nadya had given her. The air coming up from the battlefield stank of rot and spoil and smoke; the same smells she’d left behind her on Thessia. Caught in her own anxiety and fear, she reached out and ran a hand down Wrath’s frontal plate, taking comfort from the touch. He tilted his head slightly into it, but otherwise did not remark upon the touch. 

Nadya whacked Zen on the back of his helmet before jumping from the shuttle.

Blue’s breath caught when she saw Nadya land in front of a maurader. The quarian looked up and activated her cloak, disappearing a second before the maurader’s head exploded, a round placed neatly through its eye.   Zen ejected his clip, reloaded, and hopped out of the shuttle, taking out another unit as he fell. He landed, rolled into cover, and lined up another shot, still flirting with Nadya.

“Are they always like this?” Blue asked Wrath.

He checked his shotgun and lolled a grin at her. “No. Sometimes they’re worse.”

“...my little butter dumpling. Wrath, you two are clear,” Zen said.

“What is a butter dumpling?” Nadya asked.

“No idea.”

Blue shook her head and sighed, following Wrath out of the shuttle. She brought the tiny SMG up, trying to control her trembling. There were a lot of Reapers, even if Nadya said this wasn’t a large cell. Blue ducked behind cover, trying to take in everything, firing a shot at the the closest cannibal. 

  “What in the… _Blue,_ ” Wrath barked. She jerked her head up, bringing her gun around to point at him. He sighed at the panic in her eyes and batted the gun aside.

“Asari, you’re an adept, right?” he asked, shifting as a cannibal peppered his hide with rounds. They itched.

She nodded, attention pulled to the attack. “Y-yes.”

“Do you know how to create a warp field?” Wrath seemed to be ignoring the encroaching force, which had nearly surrounded them. Blue fired off a few shots, to no avail. The bullets seemed to glance off harmlessly.

“Yes. Of course. All adepts learn how to do that. Wrath, we’re surrounded,” she said.

“Yeah, yeah. Warp something, adept.”

“What?”

 “ _Warp something._ ”

His command was sharp; it startled her enough to gather a field out of instinct. She let it build and threw a burst of malignant biotic energy at the nearest unit. It barely staggered the thing. 

“I’m not very strong!” she shouted over the gunfire. “I was better with my--”

Wrath slammed into the target with a brutal charge, the two biotic fields coming together with explosive results. Blue stared at the remains of the Reapers that had been crowding around them, now nothing more than dripping gore.

“You understand why you do not need a gun, now?” Nadya’s voice buzzed in her ear.

  Blue’s lips curved up into a vicious grin, her eyes starting to bleed black. 

“Warp,” she purred, licking her lips and tasting the blood of her enemies. 

“I think she understands,” Zen confirmed, laughter in his voice.

“Let’s blow some shit up, asari.”

***

Before the war, she had been a pilot. There had never been a time _before_ ; she learned how to walk, how to fight, and how to fly, in that order, in as much time. A pilot was exactly what she was. But while most of the remaining pilots were, at this point in the war, combat trained with a military background, she was one of the few that had never worn a uniform before the Reapers crashed Earth. Independent merchandise transport specialist-- she’d been a smuggler until the Illusive Man took Omega and killed her navigator and partner. 

If she were the type to analyze things besides trajectories and flight paths, she would credit her survival to her lack of official training. The military, all militaries, were very good at instilling structure. Structure was good, but nothing that flew could be truly rigid; an aircraft had to give, had to bend, had to flex, same as a pilot. She did what she had to do to extract her squad, and if it broke doctrine, so be it. 

While she wasn’t one to take orders, Nadya’Raan only ordered what had to be done. She was, unconditionally, the commanding officer of their squad of misfits, her military brass shining through her dark suit. So when she led them on thirteen missions with no break, no downtime, no breath between save for what Pilot demanded for fueling, they followed without hesitation. The runs were brutal, the pace unforgiving, but Nadya ran herself harder than she ran the squad.

The Alliance had stopped giving Pilot orders months ago; the chain of command was crumbling under the strain. Pilot might not have needed the structure a soldier did, but someone had to tell her where to land. 

Zen seemed to appear out of nowhere, flopping down in the empty co-pilot’s chair. He moved silently enough that even if Pilot wasn’t focused on flying the shuttle, she wouldn’t have heard his approach. She watched him stretch out his legs and exhale noisily, half a groan, before settling in.

“Where is she sending us?” he asked, watching the galaxy rush by.

“Tuchanka,” Pilot said. She glanced over her shoulder into the hold-- everyone else was asleep. Blue was draped over Wrath’s side, her fingers curled around the ridge of his frontal plate. Pilot liked the asari maiden; seemed like Wrath liked her, too. 

Nadya slept alone, curled in a tuck away cot, close to the wall with her gun to her chest.

“Asleep,” Zen confirmed, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Is it a distress call?”

“Broken supply line,” Pilot said, shaking her head, rechecking the transmission. “Overrun outpost, I think. Looks like we have...Oh, geth. Goodie. Haven’t been shot at by synthetics in a while.”

“Take us to the Citadel, then,” he said, propping his feet on the dash.  

"What?” she asked.

“The Citadel. Take us there. We need the break.” Zen didn’t look at her, dialing up his omnitool instead. He typed on it a second, looked up at the dashboard viewscreen, then tapped out something else. 

Pilot found herself caught. Nadya may have been the one to give commands, but there wasn’t any explicit authority there; it was simply unspoken. No one contradicted her orders, so it didn’t come up.

Zen looked at her, fingers playing with his omnitool in an absent way. “Pilot. She cannot stop,” he said, exhaling. “It is not that she does not need to, but how do you justify rest, when you know you could save lives if you keep going?” He shrugged. “We will save more lives if we are not making stupid mistakes from exhaustion.”

He rose and rested his hand on her shoulder before heading back into the hold. “Take us to the Citadel. I’ll tell her it was my idea.”

Pilot watched him stop by Wrath and Blue. He dug around in a medkit a minute before coming up with a thermal blanket and draping it over the two. That done, he stretched out on the cot by Nadya, putting his body between her and the rest of the hold.

Pilot amended their course.


	5. Deploy Squad

“They’re fighting,” Blue said.

“Nadya has to speak to him for them to be fighting,” Pilot said.

“No,” Nadya said over her shoulder. “We are fighting.”

“No, we are not,” Zen said, looking around the docks of the Citadel. It was overrun with refugees and soldiers passing through, people begging for help and people trying to sell hope. He checked his omnitool again, then sighed and flicked his wrist, closing the interface. Nadya did not spare him a look, but made note of it. He had been on it since she woke up. It did not help her mood that she had woken up at the Citadel.

He kept pace with her, the others falling into step behind them. Blue stood on Wrath’s blind side with Pilot between the two pairs; it was a combat formation for protecting a non-combatant. Zen wondered if he was the only one who noticed it.

“You’re not fighting?” Blue asked. She looked at Wrath. “They’re not fighting.”

“If a female says you’re fighting,” Wrath said, “it doesn’t matter what the male thinks.” 

“We are fighting,” Nadya said to Zen.

He stopped and caught her arm to draw her up short. She tensed, ready for… what? he wondered. A fight, probably. They were all too used to fighting for their lives. If they ever won this war, he wondered what would remain. 

He stepped close and cocked his head so his filter canister knocked with hers, forced her chin down. The movement pressed their visors flush, allowed him to see her clearly. 

He smiled at her. “Let’s go dancing,” he said. He raised his voice, seeking support from a sure source. “Blue, you want to go dancing?”

They _were_ fighting. But they went dancing.

***

“What are you up to, suit rat?” Wrath asked, settling his bulk beside Zen, who stood at the bar. The quarian was all skinny lines and sharp edges in Purgatory’s glow, resting on his elbows as he watched the dance floor. Wrath might not have been able to make out the quarian male’s face, but he knew where his attention was. Zen’s attention was always on his woman, whether he’d cop to it or not.

Of course, if Wrath were being honest, he’d be watching Nadya, too. She was on the dance floor with Blue, the two of them absorbed in each other and the music, mindless with the distraction. There was a desperation to the club, to everyone in it. It made for good entertainment, the end of the galaxy. Pilot was nearby, speaking with a turian who looked determined to strike out with her.

“Do I have to be up to something?” Zen asked, rolling his head to look at the battlemaster. The light caught on his eyes, reflected back at Wrath. Zen held up his glass, tightly wrapped in sterile plastic, a tube running from it to the side of his filter canister. “I am up to getting drunk. This is what I am up to. It is a simple plan, yes, but a good one, right?”

Wrath shook his head. “You’re up to something. You chatter worse than that damn asari when you’re plotting.”

“You like that damn asari,” Zen pointed out.

“Didn’t say otherwise. You’re avoiding the question, suit rat.”

Zen turned his head and straightened suddenly. He set his glass down on the bar and tugged the tube free. 

“That,” he said, gesturing to the entrance of the club, “is what I’m up to.”

A group stood on the stairs; a human woman, a turian male, and another quarian, a female. Wrath eyed the quarian critically; she was young, shapely. Probably old enough not to be much fun. Quarians were only really fun when they were on pilgrimage. After that, they tended to get real fussy about dirt. The human woman was immediately recognizable, even from a distance, even without her trademark N7 armor. Wrath could smell the pheromones between her and the turian from across the club. 

“Suit rat, if you wanted to kill yourself, there’re less painful ways than pissing off Nadya,” Wrath mused. “Like pissing off a thresher maw.”

“What? No, no. Wait. Watch. Vanguards. You are always rushing.” He raised a hand, tapped open his com link. “Nadya, on your six,” he said, voice clipped. 

Wrath heard him over his own link. A battlefield tone, it had the desired effect. Nadya’s entire body twisted, her head snapped up, and her hand reached for her rifle before she caught sight of the quarian on the stairs.

Nadya cried out and dashed across the dance floor, as graceful and focused as she was on the last run of an op. Zen smiled as she flung herself into Tali’Zorah’s open arms.

***

It was early when Tali’Zorah left Nadya; much earlier than it was late. Pilot had disappeared hours ago with a group of mercs, old friends with good supply lines, she’d claimed and told them all not to worry. Wrath had happily won a fight when a pair of batarians tried to pick up Blue; the two of them were thrown out, but from the look in Blue’s eye, it didn’t seem to be a bad thing. If Nadya were going to worry about her squad’s ability to look after themselves, she would not start with the old krogan battlemaster.

Zen was the only one who refused to leave; he kept falling asleep only to be woken by changes in the music, or patrons passing by. Every time, he would jerk upright, trigger his cloak, and interrupt Tali and Nadya’s conversation. It made Tali laugh, but Nadya finally roused him for an argument over his finding a place to sleep and leaving her to her old friend.

Zen had shifted his weight and avoided her gaze, but refused to consider leaving without her. What went unsaid was that he couldn’t leave her alone, leave her with her back exposed, even if this was the Citadel, even if Commander Shepard herself was keeping the peace. He didn’t say his throat was closed at the idea of leaving her here, by herself, that panic was making his fingers itch for his gun and his VI run combat probabilities, dripping like blood down the inside of his visor.

It went unsaid, but understood.

Instead, he mumbled something to her about a room in one of the wards, one of the few that catered to quarian needs, totally sterile, and how it might be quieter, a better place for Tali and Nadya to catch up.

It was not a large room, but Zen did not seem to mind the sound of them talking. He’d fallen onto the bed that dominated most of the space, shifted so his ankle rested against Nadya’s hip, and promptly fell asleep, still kitted out. Tali had watched with an amused air, murmured something about a younger Nadya swearing no man would live up to her standards.

Nadya thought of it now, as she triggered the room’s sterilization routines and methodically removed her weapons, laying them out within easy reach of the bed. When the VI announced the room was clean, she triggered the catch to her helmet, tugging it off with a sigh. The stale air was sweet, cool against her skin. A rare luxury to feel clean air in her hair-- it had grown long, much longer than was comfortable, but there was never any time to cut it.

She sat on the bed by Zen and began to remove his weapons, laying them out within his reach. It was a testament to her skill, or his exhaustion, that he did not rouse until she laid hand on his rifle. He jerked, but stilled when she set a hand on the side of his helmet, fingers light against the curve of his neck.

“Just me,” she said, stroking her hand over the scarred edges of him. She found the catch to his visor. 

“Tali?” he asked.

She fingered the catch, giving him time to stop her. “Returned to the Normandy. Had you met her before? She said you invited her to meet with me.”

He shook his head and she pressed the release to his visor. It fell free with a soft click, revealing him to her, eyes dark with exhaustion, skin creased with new worry and new scars. She traced the one bisecting his bottom lip and could not remember the specific incident that had given it to him.

“Kal’Reegar was killed in action,” she said, pulling her hand back to remove her gloves. He caught her wrist, pulled her hand up and kissed the palm. “Tali said he took out an entire squadron of Reaper forces before they killed him.”

“I was assigned to his squad for a while,” Zen said, frowning at her fingertips. “Recon for a raid against the geth. He was a good leader. Hell of a shot, for a marine. Heard rumors about him and Tali, after her tribunal.”

“There have been too many losses,” Nadya said. She tugged her hand free of his, set about removing his helmet. 

Zen sat up, caught her by the back of the neck and pulled her forward. Instead of pressing visor to visor, forehead met forehead. When he spoke, the words feathered over her lips, smelled sweet to her.

“Eyes on the objective,” he said, curling his fingers in her hair. “Even if everyone else falls, you complete your runs.”

“ _Now_ you act like a first class infiltrator?” she asked, archly. He saw straight through the icy tone and grinned at her, lips close enough to curve her own.

“Shepard wants us to go to Earth,” he said. “She’s heard of us and thinks we can help the resistance there.”

“There is no good news coming from Earth,” Nadya said. “Earth is a death sentence.”

“Lucky thing that we are good at impossible,” he said. He paused, considering. “Well, maybe me more than you.”

“Is that so?” she asked, pushing him onto his back and climbing astride his hips. He exhaled when she bore down against him. “I am the one that reprogrammed that drone on Menae, to get it moving again, despite _two_ atlases and a handful of those phantom bosh’tets.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, fingertips quick and deft against the latches of her suit, cleverly stripping away the heavy defenses. “But before this war, there was no chance a woman like you would give me the time of day.”

She considered that, as he unwrapped her dupatta, slid her tunic free from its seal and up her stomach. His gloves were rough against her skin, dragging. He watched as she was revealed to him, inches of skin unblemished, hidden scars that brought the taste of long past panic back to the back of his throat. He knew where each came from, could name every stray bullet, every ripping claw, every blade that had torn her.

He wondered if he would have found her as beautiful without the scars. This woman was strong, was strong enough to wear her scars hidden under her smooth suit. She wore him on her skin; his hand on every wound. He had patched her back together, same as he knew she was burned into him, on every one of his own scars.

“Zen,” she said, leaning down.

“Nadya?” he asked.

She caught his hands in her own, twisting the gloves around the wrists to break their seals. He was not the only one with clever fingers; she stripped his hands bare and put them back on her skin.

“The time is oh-four-hundred,” she murmured and tasted laughter when she kissed him.


End file.
